One spring day my wife and I took our then one year old grandson to the Missouri Botanical Garden to enjoy the weather and quite frankly to kill some time. We decide to head to the Japanese garden where he could feed the koi and ducks as he was now old enough to really enjoy it … or be afraid. Turns out he enjoyed it.
At the southeast end of the lake in the Japanese garden there is a small out of the way cove with a wide, twenty foot or so long bridge that crosses the cove at its entrance. At both ends of the bridge are a couple of machines filled with food to feed the ducks and fish. I put a couple of quarters worth of feed in a plastic sandwich bag and my wife, grandson, and I (but mainly the grandson) started feeding the fish. I eventually pulled away from the activity to start taking pictures of them and the fish.
I started out taking pictures of the koi from the lake side of the bridge with the cove behind me.
They’re really not the prettiest of fish.
I think that if I toned down the highlights significantly and reduced the exposure on these next two photos they might pass for Rembrandt paintings. Then again maybe not.
I was photographing this wood duck when behind me there arose such a clatter that I sprang to the other side to see what was the matter. (That’s not plagiarism is it?)
My first thought that was a couple of ducks were mating but then I saw it was a threesome, so to speak. I neither speak nor understand duck so I am not positive what all the shouting and squawking was about. My description of what happened is based solely upon the actions I saw and my assumptions of what those actions meant.
Evidently one male wood duck had decided he was going to take another’s mate and the other was having nothing to do with that. The female wanted no part in the fight and you can see her leaving in the lower left.
The two males went at it for quite a while.
Is this waterboarding?
Finally when it looked as though the intruded had been subdued and was under control – he got loose and took off!
He was chased around the cove a couple of times before being finally chased away for good. Well … I guess that’s not totally honest reporting. We left about ten minutes later and the intruder could have come back then, or that evening, or the next day; you see where I’m going with this don’t you? The truth is I don’t know that he was actually chased away for good, just for the remainder of our stay. Whew! I feel better now having set the record straight.
The winner turned around and swam to find his mate.
They caught up with each other among the koi.
Thank you for stopping by.
David
It's Complicated 
Haha, that was such a funny story, David. 😀 You should do more of these photo stories. I love your sense of humour. You don’t speak duck. Hahaha 😂😂 aren’t they more like a quack quack here, and a quack quack there, here quack, there quack, everywhere quack quack. 😂
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Thank you Rekha, it makes me happy that you enjoyed this. Also this is a first for me as I’ve never had a comment that ended with a song. What a day! 🙂
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🙂🙂
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It was nice to see your wood duck shots. The garden here put up a couple of fancy wood duck houses but it has been two years and still no wood ducks.
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That just goes to show that “build it and they will come” only happens in the movies. I think now days to get anyone to come you also have to offer TIF incentives.
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Hahaha, that was hilarious! Who knew ducks had such existential problems? And we even got a happy ending! Phew, what a relief.
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I’m glad you enjoyed it. After a very intense few minutes of following the action I was very happy with the outcome but immediately became concerned that my abundant tears of joy would seep through the camera’s viewfinder, into the internal workings and cause damage. Luckily that did not happen.
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Outstanding action series of the fight, David, wow! Loved the story; and, of course, the happily ever after ending! 🙂
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Thank you. That’s the longest series I’ve ever tracked and it was all with focus set to single point center, the only setting I ever use because I haven’t tried creating and saving multi-point tracking setting.
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